Liu Jiwen spent an entire afternoon researching, and during this time, all the friend requests he sent, including those to Shanchi Technology, were accepted.
The game he played the most was the Friend Buy/Sell mini-game.
It was a very fresh way to play, earning more and more game coins by buying and selling friends as "slaves."
And with enough game coins, any friend could be bought as a "slave," even if that friend was currently someone else's slave, they could be forcibly purchased.
Letting your friends work for you to earn money, and being able to force hire them, the Friend Buy/Sell game expertly grasped human psychology.
Coupled with Kaixinwang's target as white-collar workers, those with workplace experience had a deeper appreciation for earning money through labor.
"Still too few friends, it's not fun. I need to get more friends."
After playing for half a day, Liu Jiwen was a bit addicted, but felt unsatisfied due to having too few friends.
They couldn't add too many dummy accounts operated by Chengzi Technology employees, as that would be too obvious.
Moreover, Kaixinwang's main focus was acquaintance social networking; it was more fun to play with familiar friends.
Kaixinwang had a built-in feature for users to send email invitations to friends for registration.
After playing the Parking Space game for a while longer, Liu Jiwen decided to send email invitations to his friends to join.
"Kaixinwang is really fun, several of my friends have already registered on it."
The lines were designed by Kaixinwang, a one-click generated email that only required filling in the recipient's email address.
It supported group sending, which was very convenient.
Registering through an invitation email also gave out game coins.
For these game coins, Liu Jiwen notified his friends one by one who had received invitation emails, urging them to register for Kaixinwang.
Friends inviting friends eliminated the invitee's guard against invitation emails and could also stimulate interest in SNS.
Relying on the spread of popularity, this marketing cost was actually very low.
All Chengzi Technology had to pay was some game coins to the inviters, which was more effective than spending a large amount of money on advertising.
In his previous life, Pinxixi's cut-the-price feature was also a form of viral marketing, and it pushed viral marketing to its limit.
Although many users disliked it, it did acquire a large number of users through this cut-the-price method.
"Almost all internet websites, in their early stages, resorted to unscrupulous means to acquire users. There's no need to care about reputation. Reputation is useful when it's useful, but when it's not, it's utterly useless. If the service keeps up later, people won't care at all."
"Tengxun's Xiao Ma Ge even posed as a woman to trick netizens. The Pig Factory where you guys used to work wasn't exactly glorious in its early days of acquiring users either. So, you don't need to be too concerned about this at all."
Facing the doubts of a group of tech guys about the marketing methods, Gu Qingqing spoke eloquently.
These were all things Tan Jincheng had taught her.
A group of tech guys, looking at the product they had painstakingly developed over several months, now had users, and those users had accepted this method of acquiring new users through a form of harassment.
Yet, they became a little apprehensive about gains and losses.
In fact, it wasn't just the tech guys who found it hard to accept this shameless marketing method; Gu Qingqing, who was still very new to entrepreneurship, couldn't quite understand it either.
Knowing the benefits of such marketing methods and actually accepting them were two different things; after all, she was still a student.
Tan Jincheng could understand.
Tech guys in this era were still quite naive.
Products were relatively "sacred" in their eyes, and they worried about being criticized for acquiring users in such a way.
The technical staff in Shanchi Technology's R&D department were the same.
Don't let their usual grumbling fool you; when it came to product design, they were very serious.
If Tan Jincheng's demands were unreasonable or technically unachievable, they would still voice their objections.
Gu Qingqing was also like this.
Never having truly run a business, she couldn't understand the real business world.
When users don't know the quality of your product, if you want to put their money into your own pocket, you have to use some tactics.
Everyone at Chengzi Technology, including Gu Qingqing, felt that the Kaixinwang project was hard to develop and wanted to nurture it carefully.
But in Tan Jincheng's view, it was nothing major.
The technical requirements were not high, and there were many similar competing products on the market.
There were no technical barriers, no moats.
Its only purpose was to collect user data, make money, or see if other projects could be incubated from it later.
Therefore, in Tan Jincheng's opinion, marketing was the key to Kaixinwang's success.
---
Kaixinwang's user base grew very rapidly.
From Liu Jiwen's start, on the first day of its official launch, the number of users exceeded 500.
These 500 users were all real user data and all had personal connections.
User stickiness was very high.
The dummy accounts controlled by Chengzi Technology employees no longer needed to add friends one by one; they only needed to provide daily user guidance.
Internet users are divided into real users and potential users.
For example, the group of users who were forced to register for Pinxixi's cut-the-price feature through friend sharing in the early stages could only be considered potential users.
Kaixinwang's users, however, belonged to the real user group.
Once registered, they could play games, post photos, and share their mood.
This meant that even though only 500 users were accumulated on the first day, the activity level was not low.
Users like Liu Jiwen and his invited friends spent a high amount of time online after entering the game state.
Gu Qingqing was very happy.
Kaixinwang's launch day was July 7th, a day she had specially chosen.
Qixi Festival was Tan Jincheng's birthday.
Although July 7th was still more than 20 days away from Tan Jincheng's actual birthday, the numbers were close, and Tan Jincheng had also said he preferred odd numbers.
The website performed well on its first day of launch, and its growth rate was even faster on the second day, rising directly from 500 users to 4,000, an eight-fold increase.
By the third day, after two days of spreading and being a Sunday, Kaixinwang's registered users had surged to 40,000.
All of this was based solely on users' spontaneous invitations.
Cheng Hao's negotiations with MSN were still ongoing.
Therefore, Kaixinwang's promotion at this time was limited to advertisements on internet forums and other social platforms.
While these ads generated considerable buzz, their effectiveness in attracting users was generally average.
Not many netizens would specifically click to try an ad after seeing it was an advertisement post.
Not cursing you was already considered a high-quality netizen.
Accumulating 40,000 real users in three days thrilled the entire Chengzi Technology team!
"Holy crap, there's potential here! I feel like our website is going to be a hit. This growth rate is incredibly fast!"
"This 'send registration invitation to get game coins' is like a poison. The 40,000 registered users actually spread from those first 500 on day one."
"A 10-fold daily growth rate is truly terrifying! Is this what the boss meant by 'one spreads to ten, ten spreads to a hundred'?"
"I'll never dare question the boss's marketing plan again. I admit I was superficial."
"He truly is the recognized marketing guru in the EV sector. He's just as phenomenal in internet marketing."
Gu Qingqing was also very happy:
"Now you're not saying the boss's marketing methods will affect the reputation of the product you developed?"
"What reputation? What is reputation? All I see now are stacks of cash bonuses!"
"Exactly, exactly! All I want to say now is, long live the boss!"
"Boss Cheng needs to hurry up. If we can't finalize the cooperation with MSN, we'll have to abandon him."
The expectation that Kaixinwang would become a hit signaled that they would receive large bonuses and stock options.
In the face of real profit, reputation was fleeting.
If Kaixinwang succeeded, they would have everything, and no one could stop them then!
"Alright, don't just focus on being happy. Ensure website maintenance, check for bugs, and collect user feedback. Also, with such rapid growth in registration numbers, pay attention to the servers."
Building a website, including domain, server, maintenance, and other costs, as well as the time and effort involved, required a lot.
Having been CEO for several months, Gu Qingqing already knew some of the ins and outs.
Currently, Kaixinwang had no monetization channels or external funding; it was all self-funded.
Now that it had the potential to be a hit, it meant the money spent was worthwhile.
They couldn't afford any problems at this critical juncture.
"Understood, boss, rest assured, nothing will go wrong!"
Cheng Hao brought an entire team, from development to post-maintenance, and even marketing personnel.
This was the benefit of recruiting excellent talent; they weren't independent individuals but often came as a whole team.
They only needed to be given a general idea, the desired results, and future market expectations, and they would allocate specific tasks themselves.
The Kaixinwang project team was overjoyed.
Although the Kaixin Farm project team was also happy, they felt somewhat disappointed compared to the Kaixinwang project team, as their developed project had not launched alongside Kaixinwang.
"Don't worry, you guys. Refine your work. Your time to shine will come. Also, you can start researching the new game projects that Boss Tan assigned."
With the project development completed, the farm project team had more free time.
They were initially unaccustomed to not working overtime, so Tan Jincheng proposed several new mini-game projects for Kaixinwang, letting them brainstorm on their own.
The lifecycle of mini-games is often not very long, and there's no guarantee that every game will be accepted by the market.
To maintain its popularity, Kaixinwang must constantly innovate and develop more mini-games.
The first batch of launched games, Friend Buy/Sell and Parking Space, aimed to accumulate users.
Once there were enough users and veteran players had accumulated a certain amount of game coins, the novelty of the game would wear off.
At that point, it would be Kaixin Farm's turn to enter the stage.
Young people's emotions came and went quickly.
After being comforted by Gu Qingqing, the farm project team felt much better.
They cheered up and continued to work!
(End of chapter)